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In every area of practice, WilmerHale brings the insight, dedication to excellence, and commitment to client service needed for our clients to achieve their business objectives. Our five-department structure and team approach to service enable us to provide the highest level of responsiveness and access to lawyers with the most appropriate experience.

We opened our office in Brussels in 1990, just as the European Community introduced its Merger Control Regulation and in anticipation of the impact of the single market in 1992.

Since opening, the office has contributed to the leading reputation of the firm in Europe and has gained widespread recognition as one of the premier law offices in Brussels. We concentrate on complex, challenging issues at the intersection of business, law, and policy. The success of the Brussels office can be attributed to the continued work in these areas, as well as to the careful combination of an exceptional group of lawyers from across Europe and North America.

Our lawyers are qualified in many of the major European and North American jurisdictions, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The breadth of European and American legal traditions represented gives us a pronounced pan-European and transatlantic orientation that is reflected both in the work and the culture of the office. Claus-Dieter Ehlermann, resident in the Brussels office, perhaps best personifies these qualities. Before joining the firm, Professor Ehlermann spent a large of part of his career developing and implementing policies to further European market integration, as Director-General of DG Competition of the European Commission and before that, Director-General of the Commission’s Legal Service. He then spent six years adjudicating the most contentious global trade disputes between the world’s nations as a Member and later Chairman of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization. With this extensive experience, Claus-Dieter Ehlermann and the other members of our competition, trade, and other regulatory practices are able to provide to the firm’s clients around the world unique insight into and guidance through the decision making processes of European, US and other governmental institutions. Read about our cross-border investigations and compliance experience.

We opened our office in Brussels in 1990, just as the European Community introduced its Merger Control Regulation and in anticipation of the impact of the single market in 1992.

Since opening, the office has contributed to the leading reputation of the firm in Europe and has gained widespread recognition as one of the premier law offices in Brussels. We concentrate on complex, challenging issues at the intersection of business, law, and policy. The success of the Brussels office can be attributed to the continued work in these areas, as well as to the careful combination of an exceptional group of lawyers from across Europe and North America.

Publications & News

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP and the Centre for Small States, Queen Mary University of London, held a seminar on 16 March in Brussels on promoting and encouraging trade and commerce in the Pacific region.

Last week, the EU Commission published a number of important documents on IP. The documents include (i) a communication paper “Setting out the EU approach to Standard Essential Patents,” and (ii) a communication paper giving “Guidance on certain aspects of Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the enforcement of intellectual property rights.”

The UK government has taken an additional step in its attempts to find a way to ensure uninterrupted data flows between the UK and the EU after Brexit. On 13 September 2017, the UK government introduced a draft Data Protection Bill to the UK Parliament, accompanied by explanatory notes.

Frédéric Louis and Anne Vallery highlight a few of the significant developments, touching upon all aspects of European Commission enforcement of the TFEU antitrust rules, under the supervision of the EU courts in Luxembourg, that took place over the past year. The authors also discuss in greater detail two issues relating to Article 101 TFEU enforcement, namely the concept of infringement by object and what it means for the Commission's burden of proof, and the limits of the single continuous complex infringement (SCCI) concept as it applies to fringe participants in a cartel.

For the last two years, the European Commission (“EC”) has been carrying out a Sector Inquiry into e-commerce of consumer goods and digital content in the EU. As part of this, the EC has sent companies many questionnaires and, in response, received some 9,000 sales, distribution and licensing agreements.

Current Developments

In every area of practice, WilmerHale brings the insight, dedication to excellence, and commitment to client service needed for our clients to achieve their business objectives. Our five-department structure and team approach to service enable us to provide the highest level of responsiveness and access to lawyers with the most appropriate experience.